Astronomers capture highest-resolution image ever of the Sun’s surface

An international cadre of astronomers has unveiled the clearest snapshot yet of the Sun's surface. The image, captured by the Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, uncovers intricate plasma whirlpools that were previously undetected (Nature doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10871-3). The Sun's visible surface, or photosphere, is a thin atmospheric layer enabling plasma transparency.

This region exhibits dynamic and complex behavior, influenced by magnetic fields and convection currents. The astronomers focused on a magnetically active area near a sunspot. The image depicts the solar surface characterized by band-like and vortex-like structures. The authors link these features with Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, a recognized phenomenon in fluid dynamics where rippled formations emerge when two fluids glide past one another at varying velocities.

This triggers shear forces at the interface, causing minute disturbances to evolve into wave- or vortex-like motions. These vortices manifest at the periphery of granules, densely populating the Sun's visible surface and spanning between 500 and 2000 km in diameter. Certain "fringes" are as narrow as 20 km. The resolution of these structures is akin to distinguishing a €1 coin from 180 km away.

The findings offer the first documented proof of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities on the Sun and researchers posit that the instability could elucidate why the Sun's outer atmosphere attains extreme temperatures and why magnetic energy accumulates and propagates across the surface. Sami Solanki, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany, remarks that the newly discovered plasma vortices vividly demonstrate how minute processes, close to the threshold of resolvable detail using all available techniques, profoundly influence the nature of our star.